The current New Yorker caption contest is legally-themed and sexually explicit, so it begs for our attention.
The Nine get naughty! We couldn’t get permission to post it here, so you’ll have to click over to the New Yorker to check it out.
We did a little background check on the finalists for the caption contest. We were disappointed to discover that none of them is a lawyer. We were also disappointed by their captions:
“O.K., counsellor, we heard your argument. Now tell us a story.” - Fred Orelove, a non-profit director
“Five to four of us would like you to get the lights on your way out.” - Robert Shay, director the University of Missouri’s School of Music
“How long have you been standing there?” – Evan Carrison, a Chicago artist
You can vote for one of those, but we’re hoping that someone with a J.D. can come up with something better. We’re holding a caption contest here at ATL. Our first submission comes from Larry Wood, the Chicago lawyer renowned for winning the New Yorker caption contest three times…
Continue reading “ATL/New Yorker Caption Contest: In Bed with SCOTUS”
The most recent New Yorker features a profile of the newest resident of the High Court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Given the tone of the piece, you might think One First Street is turning into Melrose Place. Journalist Lauren Collins describes Sotomayor as “the first celebrity Justice”: a “diabetic, a divorcée, a dental-bill debtor, a person who, the night before her investiture ceremony, belted out “We Are Family” in a karaoke bar at a Red Roof Inn.”
The profile covers some familiar territory, highlighting attacks on Sotomayor’s intellect during the confirmation process and indignation over her aggressive questioning during oral arguments since taking a seat on the High bench.
Overall, though, it’s more favorable in tone than the profile of John Roberts in the magazine last year. As the WSJ Law Blog notes, Sotomayor comes across as “eminently personable” and as a “stickler for preparation.”
Tina Brown of the Daily Beast, a former editor of the New Yorker, is a bit more graphic in her reaction to the piece for NPR:
Brown says the justice comes across as an “up-from-the-bootstraps woman who loves to bust out a poker game and knock back a scotch.” But, Brown adds, she also comes across as meticulous, rigorous and heavily influenced by her mother, a nurse, who emphasized education above all else…
“Sotomayor is not a great prose styler, not a fancy-flourish merchant,” says Brown. “She’s not a person who’s going to reinvent the philosophical approach to law, but she does believe that the law is to be understood by the common man in the street. And I think that there’s a lot to be said for that, actually.”
We concur with Brown’s ruling on the piece. We’ve excerpted our favorite anecdote from the profile after the jump. Clerking for Sotomayor sounds fun….
Continue reading “SCOTUS Justice Sonia Sotomayor Has Star Power”
The current New Yorker has an interesting piece by Jeffrey Toobin on President Obama’s judicial picks. Toobin took part in a live chat about the piece at NewYorker.com right now earlier today if you’re interested. (Try not to crash their website.).
UPDATE: The chat’s quite interesting. Toobin reveals why he likes Justice Souter best and answers this young wannabe judge’s question:
11:31 Guest: I’m a 25 year old law student, I want to be a judge, and my roommate smokes pot. How worried should I be? Do you think people will still care when I’m older?
11:32 Jeffrey Toobin: Don’t inhale! I’m kidding. I don’t think it will make a bit of difference. Our president has more or less admitted he was a pretty big pothead in his day, and it’s been a non-issue. Certainly the fact that your roommate smokes — not you — is irrelevant.
Toobin’s piece is available online to non-subscribers here. If you don’t feel like clicking through seven pages, here’s the ATL reader’s digest version:
We know many lawyers who agonize over the New Yorker magazine’s weekly caption contest, desperately hoping to come up with a gnomic, witty caption worthy of selection. But we know of only one lawyer who has managed to come up with a winning caption three times. Let us introduce you to Larry Wood, an attorney at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago.
Wood, who also teaches a housing and poverty law class at the University of Chicago, has won the weekly contest more often than anyone else. (A slight technicality: A man by the name of Carl Gable has won three times, but one of those was the New Yorker’s annual contest, which has since been replaced by the weekly contests.)
Out of 38 submissions in the four-year history of the contest, Wood’s made it to the finals three times. That’s mighty impressive, given that he’s competing against at least 5,000 other caption entries each week, reports Steve Johnson of the Chicago Tribune. So how’d he do it? Here’s what he told us on the phone this morning:
Short is better. Incorporate everything that’s in the cartoon. In one cartoon I was working with, there was a dolphin and a panhandler. So I thought of all the cliches I could think of about dolphins and about panhandlers. Dolphins are extremely intelligent, etc. Then I came up with the caption that won. My colleagues thought it was a mean-spirited joke for a poverty lawyer to make.
Maybe lawyers have advantages in the caption contests. As one friend of ours noted in response to Wood’s advice, “incorporating all the elements into your answer is actually a skill lawyers are supposed to use in their bar exam essays (and law school tort exams).”
Check out Wood’s winners, including the controversial caption, after the jump.
Everyone’s a-twitter about Jeffrey Toobin’s profile of Chief Justice John Roberts in this week’s New Yorker. And with good reason. We’re not sure whether the title of the profile, “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” is meant to describe Roberts or Toobin.
We’re sure you’re familiar with Toobin, the ubiquitous legal analyst whose resume includes gigs with CNN and ABC, as well a Harvard Law School degree, a stint as an assistant U.S. attorney, time on the Oliver North trial, a Second Circuit clerkship, and many books, including The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. And he’s not yet 50 years old (though he’ll be 49 on Thursday, according to Wikipedia).
But back to Roberts. He gets a fairly harsh appraisal in the profile, coming across as a political stooge:
After four years on the Court, however, Roberts’s record is not that of a humble moderate but, rather, that of a doctrinaire conservative. The kind of humility that Roberts favors reflects a view that the Court should almost always defer to the existing power relationships in society. In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff. Even more than Scalia, who has embodied judicial conservatism during a generation of service on the Supreme Court, Roberts has served the interests, and reflected the values, of the contemporary Republican Party.
Toobin does not appear to be a fan of the Roberts Court. More on the elephant in the courtroom, after the jump.
Continue reading “Chief Justice John Roberts: The Elephant in the SCOTUS Courtroom?”
If you’re a judiciary junkie who used to read Underneath Their Robes, the judicial news and gossip site that was our first foray into blogging, you may be mildly amused by this strange piece of spam.
Jeffrey Toobin — legal affairs writer for the New Yorker and author of The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, one of our favorite books in 2007 — forwarded the rather bizarre email to us yesterday. Check it out, after the jump.
* Donald Trump gives on-the-record comments to a blawg (albeit an MSM-affiliated one). The man is a total media whore. But he’s the little brother of a certain fabulous Third Circuit judge, so we forgive him. [WSJ Law Blog]
(Check out the photos at right. We see a definite family resemblance. Which may or may not be a good thing.)
* Speaking of siblings, our big brother wonders: “Do we smell a Jeff Skilling comeback in the air?” And hits the nail on the head with respect to Malcolm Gladwell, too. [DealBreaker]
* The start of a new year is a perfect time for blogospheric navel-gazing reflections upon the future of law-related blogging. [Opinio Juris via Volokh Conspiracy]
* As well as New Year’s resolutions. [Nasty, Brutish & Short; Jeremy Blachman; Althouse]
* And raucous law blogger parties. Woo-hoo! [Concurring Opinions; PrawfsBlawg]
Here’s another excellent article from Jeffrey Toobin of the New Yorker. It’s about the role played by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), outgoing chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, with respect to the recent habeas corpus legislation (aka the Military Commissions Act of 2006).
If you’re confused about the controversy over this legislation, which has wound its way through both the federal courts and the Senate chamber, the article is well worth your time. It explains recent developments in this complex area of law with commendable clarity.
And it also contains fun bits of color and gossip. We collect a few highlights, after the jump.
Continue reading “Senator Arlen Specter: One Heck of a Squash Player”
Justice Stephen G. Breyer demonstrates his hidden talent for pantomime, as Jeffrey Toobin looks on admiringly. (Photo by Startraks.)
This is our final post about Justice Stephen Breyer’s recent appearance at the New Yorker Festival. Prior posts are available here, here, here, and here.
We highlight some of the more interesting or amusing remarks by Justice Breyer, after the jump.
Continue reading “Justice Breyer at the New Yorker Festival: Some Highlights (Part 2)”
“Nino, you wanna piece of me?” Justice Stephen G. Breyer and Jeffrey Toobin, at the New Yorker Festival. Photo by Startraks.
Somewhat late, but better late than never: part one of the more detailed account that we promised you of Justice Stephen Breyer’s interview with Jeffrey Toobin, at the New Yorker Festival last weekend.
The setting of the interview was impressive. The Celeste Bartos Forum at the New York Public Library is a grand, high-ceilinged room, with marble and dark wood trim gracing the walls. Justice Breyer and Jeff Toobin sat on two directors’ chairs on the small, elevated stage at the front of the room, with a gold and brown backdrop behind them.
Before the talk started, one could feel the buzz of anticipation in the room. Our knees were trembling with anticipation, and our heart was beating almost audibly. Supreme Court justices make us weak! (And apparently we’re not alone. Festival publicist Kimberly Burns informed us that the Breyer/Toobin talk sold out on Ticketmaster in three minutes — like a rock concert.)
More notes, after the jump.
Continue reading “Justice Breyer at the New Yorker Festival: Some Highlights (Part 1)”
Actually, no, we didn’t ask him that. But the question we did pose was just about as goofy. It felt sort of like Punk’d: Supreme Court Edition.
First, some background. As previously discussed, this past weekend we attended Jeffrey Toobin’s interview of Justice Stephen G. Breyer, part of the New Yorker Festival. It was an interesting talk, even if it may not have met our (perhaps unrealistic) expectations.
We may write even more about the interview later (because it did go on for about an hour and a half). For now, though, we’ll share with you what happened when we got up during the Q-and-A session and posed a question to Justice Stephen Breyer.
Check it out, after the jump.
Continue reading “ATL to Justice Breyer: “What Kind of Tree Would You Be?””
Yesterday afternoon, we attended a delightful event at the New Yorker Festival: an interview of The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, conducted by David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker. Stewart was in fine form, and he “stopped the show” several times, reducing the audience to laughter so loud they had to pause before continuing. Several notable folks, including Maureen Dowd and screenwriter Paul Haggis (winner of last year’s Oscar for “Crash”), were in the audience.
Some good quips from Stewart (which we paraphrase, since we don’t have a transcript). On Ann Coulter:
I actually feel sorry for her. Once your career is based on denigrating 9/11 widows, what’s your second act? Unless you dig up Mother Teresa and stick a dildo in her eye, nothing could be more offensive.
On the Mark Foley scandal:
We do have pages on The Daily Show. I just want to make one thing clear to their parents, and to everyone else: We WILL sodomize them.
On John McCain, and the media’s general adoration for him:
You know, he has the Straight Talk Express. And he’s driving it to Bullshittown.
When the Q-and-A session began, we were the first ones to the microphone. We often ask questions at these events, but we try to (1) ask funny or interesting questions, (2) keep them brief, and (3) keep them as questions (as opposed to never-ending rants that the moderator eventually cuts off).
An account of our questions and Stewart’s responses, after the jump.
We attended several other New Yorker Festival events in addition to Justice Breyer’s talk with Jeffrey Toobin (which we discussed here and here). One of these was a fascinating panel about representations of the Mafia in popular culture, entitled TV, Movies, and the Mob.
The panel, moderated by Jeffrey Goldberg, was star-studded. It included the magnificent Lorraine Bracco, aka Dr. Jennifer Melfi of “The Sopranos”; Paul Haggis, who won the best screenplay Oscar for “Crash” (and is working on a new TV series about the criminal underworld); Harold Ramis, director and co-writer of “Analyze This” and “Analyze That”; and Frank Vincent, who plays Phil Leotardo on “The Sopranos.”
But the panelist of the greatest interest to us was a lawyer: Gerald Shargel, one of the top criminal defense attorneys in the country. Shargel has represented numerous high-profile defendants, including the Mafia boss John Gotti and various members of the Gambino family. As Goldberg drily described Shargel during the introductions: “He’s the sort of lawyer you got to when you have BIG problems. Not just regular-size problems….”
A more detailed discussion of the panel, after the jump.
Continue reading “TV, Movies, and the Mob: Some Quality Time with Gerald Shargel”
It’s another amazingly beautiful day here in New York, and we’re blogging from Bryant Park. The temperature is in the low 70′s, there’s not a cloud in the sky, and a slight breeze is blowing. Life is good.
We don’t have much time — we’re about to run off to another New Yorker Festival event — but after sleeping on it, and reviewing our notes (’cause that’s what they’re for), we’d like to revise our earlier assessment of Justice Breyer’s interview with Jeffrey Toobin yesterday.
Although it could have been more fun, if Justice Breyer had been more forthcoming, there were actually quite a number of interesting stories and humorous moments — more than we remembered. Yesterday’s take may have been influenced by the fact that the interview’s highlights were clustered toward the beginning of the talk, and more of the bland civics-lecture material was near the end. So immediately after leaving the talk, it was the dry stuff that stuck in our mind. We’ll have more to say later about the best parts of the interview.
In the meantime, check out Ann Althouse’s great question:
David Lat gets antsy when an interview with Justice Breyer is insufficiently confessional. Why can’t he be more like Justice Scalia (or Judge Posner or Judge Kozinski)? Is there some reason the conservative judicial stars are more fun? Do liberals always have to demonstrate their circumspection?
It’s a fascinating inquiry, and one that we’ve entertained often ourselves. Do you have thoughts on why today’s leading judicial “rock stars” tend to be conservative? If so, please place them in the comments. (We’d like to see more robust debates in the comments here at ATL, like at other blogs.)
Three thoughts that we’d like to offer, before you accuse us (and Professor Althouse) of being biased in favor of conservatives:
1. There are a number of charismatic, colorful, outspoken federal judges who are quite liberal. Four examples, off the top of our head: Judge Stephen Reinhardt (9th Cir.), Judge Guido Calabresi (2d Cir.), Judge Jack Weinstein (E.D.N.Y.), and Judge Nancy Gertner (D. Mass.). So, in fairness to the left wing, let’s admit that they too have their icons.
2. Today the top judicial celebrities tend to be conservative. Is this just because the Republicans have been in power for quite some time — and because the most recent Supreme Court nominees, as well as any SCOTUS nominees in the near future, will probably be conservatives?
(Or maybe not. Judge Kozinski or Judge Posner are both brilliant, but they are unlikely Supreme Court nominees, perhaps because they are so outspoken and larger-than-life.)
3. It wasn’t always like this. Two of the most enjoyable and entertaining Supreme Court justices of the twentieth century were Justice Douglas and Justice Brennan — and they don’t come more liberal than that. (So don’t accuse us of refusing to recognize fascinating figures of the judicial left. We just feel that the best ones aren’t around today.)
Okay, gotta run. Apologies for typos or sloppy (or sloppier than usual) writing; we haven’t proofread this. Hasta luego.
We’re about to head to dinner, so we’ll write more about this later. For now, from Bryant Park — free wireless! — here’s a quick, rushed, half-baked commentary on Justice Stephen G. Breyer’s interview with Jeffrey Toobin at the New Yorker Festival.
It’s always thrilling to see a Supreme Court justice in the flesh. But, truth be told, we were a little disappointed (and not because SGB dodged our question during the Q-and-A with a rambling hypothetical about green roof tiles). On the whole, Justice Breyer was a bit too tame in his remarks to be a great interviewee.
It wasn’t Jeff Toobin’s fault; Toobin tried to bring Justice Breyer out of his shell (as he did with Edie Falco, who was a brilliant interviewee at last year’s Festival). But Justice Breyer was, on the whole, too restrained and insufficiently gossipy.
Justice Breyer was obviously precluded from talking about substantive legal issues (which several audience made futile attempts to get him to do). So he should have offered up lots of color and dish: harmless random details about life as a SCOTUS justice, tons of funny stories. Sadly, he didn’t do much of that; a little, but not enough.
What did he do? He offered up lots of vague generalities about the role of the courts in a democracy. If you’ve sat through one of Justice Breyer’s civics lectures on C-SPAN, or through the first week of a Con Law course, you’ve heard this all before. A telling refrain that preceded many of his remarks: “As I tell my students” (i.e., the elementary and high schoolers he gives civics lessons to).
The best interviewees are confessional. You feel like they’re at dinner with a close friend (the interviewer), and you’re a fly on the wall, hearing all sorts of juicy stuff you really shouldn’t be hearing. But everything Justice Breyer said today he could have said — and probably has already said — on C-SPAN, or in his book, Active Liberty.
You’re about to complain: “C’mon, how could you expect much fun? The man is a sitting Supreme Court justice, for crying out loud!”
Our response: There are ways to entertain, enrage, or engage your audience, even if you’re a federal judge, without violating ethical precepts. Every time Justice Scalia makes a public appearance, for example, there’s an article in the newspaper the next day about some fun, wacky, or thought-provoking remark he made.
Judge Alex Kozinski and Judge Richard Posner are the same way. They are colorful characters, prolific writers and public speakers. They make us laugh, and they make us think, but without crossing the line into impropriety.
Unfortunately, Justice Breyer shied too far away from that line in his appearance today. We’ll blog about the highlights of what he did say later (and don’t get us wrong; there were a number of funny moments and interesting anecdotes). But on the whole, for those of you who couldn’t get tickets (it sold out in three minutes), you didn’t miss as much as you might think.
Another weekend, another out-of-town excursion. In a few hours, we’re heading back up to the Big Apple, to attend events at the New Yorker Festival. A brief description of the Festival, from its website:
The New Yorker Festival returns for its seventh year, from October 6th through October 8th, in a celebratory weekend of public discourse on arts and ideas. The three-day schedule of events encompasses readings, musical performances, interviews, debates, and excursions around New York City.
If you happen to be attending the Festival too, please come up and say hello. We’ll be at these events:
3. The Honorable Stephen G. Breyer and Jeffrey Toobin
We’re especially looking forward to the appearance of Justice Stephen G. Breyer, whom we’ve never seen up close and personal.* Justice Breyer will be interviewed by Jeffrey Toobin — who, for obvious reasons, is one of our favorite legal journalists (or writers of any type, period). Last year we attended Jeff Toobin’s interview of Edie Falco, which was nothing short of brilliant — one of the best live interviews we’ve ever attended (and we’ve attended many over the years; we’re interview junkies).
Our excitement about seeing Justice Breyer has only increased since we realized, earlier today, that he looks like an older version of one of our favorite screenwriters and actors: the phenomentally talented, unfailingly hilarious Mike White, who wrote and acted in Chuck & Buck, The Good Girl, and The School of Rock (among many other films).**
Check it out. Here’s the ocular proof:
* We’ve seen all of the justices from across the SCOTUS courtroom, at oral argument (including the late Chief Justice Rehnquist and retired Justice O’Connor). But in terms of actual, formal introductions — of the handshake-and-name-exchange type — we’ve met only Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito.
** Chuck&Buck is one of our favorite movies of all time. We have a weakness for films focused on obsession and insanity. E.g., All About Eve, The Piano Teacher, Fatal Attraction, Monster.
The New Yorker Festival [official website]
Mike White biography [Yahoo! Movies]
Mike White I [IMDb]
Some random reading recommendations, which don’t have much to do with law. But that’s what weekends are for, right?
* Suffering from Entourage withdrawal? Read about a real-life agent dumping (by Jim Carrey). [Defamer]
* Suffering from Project Runway withdrawal, since there was no new episode this week? Get your hands on the New Yorker’s fantastic fashion issue. The profile of Diane von Furstenberg — by Larissa MacFarquhar, who once profiled Judge Richard Posner — is especially worthwhile. So is Andrea Lee’s article about high-end handbags (“The Bag Lady”). [New Yorker (table of contents; most articles not online)]
* Suffering from Harriet Miers withdrawal? Head over to the blog of Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, Archbishop of Boston. Then run a search (ctrl-F) for “LOL.” [Cardinal Seán’s Blog via New York Times]
Ed. note: This post is authored by Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney of Kinney Recruiting, sponsor of the Asia Chronicles. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates and partners in Asia than any other firm in the past five years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com
Happy Chinese New Year! We were extremely busy the past few months, including most of our US based team working from our Hong Kong offices during November and December.
As a follow up from our recent post, which listed our 62 US associate and counsel placements in Asia last year (vast majority in HK / China), please note that thus far in January ’12, we have already made seven US associate and counsel placements in Asia. This is an especially impressive number, considering the biglaw lateral hiring market in Asia is down right now (see state of the market brief overview below). These new placements are of new hires in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, who were interviewing with their new firm for a month or more and they are spread out among different practice areas, including project finance, litigation, fund formation, M&A and cap markets. We are close on four additional new associate placements, in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Shanghai, that we expect to close soon. We do not discuss partner placements in these articles, but the pace of partner recruitment in Asia (a large part of our business) has continued.
Hedge Fund In-House Openings in Hong Kong
We are seeing a small run of new in-house openings in Hong Kong at hedge funds. We are currently filling three different in-house positions at three different hedge funds in Hong Kong, two of these searches we are handling on an exclusive basis. All three will most likely be filled by a US associate, with about 4 to 6 years of experience. Mandarin not required. Candidates from NYC and London will be considered, but at one of these funds the new hire will likely come from Hong Kong / China or Singapore (with HK being the strong preference).
Please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com if you are interested in these hedge fund openings. As you probably would expect, the competition for these spots will be fierce and the funds will be very selective when choosing which candidates to interview.
In 2009, a small group of Harvard Law School students noticed an absurd monopoly in the bar prep space, held by an unchallenged leader with a non-evolving product. In response, these students teamed up with Harvard Law alumni to launch BarMax on January 14, 2010.
The mission: democratize bar prep by embracing new technologies to provide the very best bar exam review courses at a fraction of the cost normally associated with these courses.
Since then, with the encouragement of thousands of students and an unwavering commitment to their success, BarMax has established itself as a comprehensive alternative to the stagnant, over-priced status quo.
As we continue to expand, we do not want to lose sight of the basic premises that led us to create BarMax in the first place. If you are a law student who believes that there is something fundamentally wrong with being forced to take out yet another loan to pay for a $4,000 bar exam prep course, you are not alone.
